


If You're Prepared to Adapt

by Stacicity



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: First Meetings, Gen, Harry has no idea what he's doing, Kingsman seems to take very poor psychiatric care of its recruits, Merlin is not yet Merlin, Pre-Canon, Set before they got to know each other and it became a relationship of constant flirting, this one's just awkward
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-29 22:48:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15083423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stacicity/pseuds/Stacicity
Summary: It was the first day of the rest of his life. Harry had achieved everything he'd set out for over the last year. His first meeting with an unfamiliar Knight could, under the circumstances, have gone better.





	If You're Prepared to Adapt

Sleep was the most valuable commodity a spy could have. Food, weapons, connections, technology, those were all very well, but without sleep the human body was subject to complete and total collapse. Hallucinations, raised blood pressure, lowered concentration, issues with balance – there was a reason that sleep deprivation was such an effect method of torture. And Harry ought to know. That had been covered in quite emphatic detail throughout training. 

Training was done, now. It had been fifteen months of lectures and tests and laps. Harry had arrived in the dormitories for the first time a different person, really, and not just because he hadn’t had the name Galahad affixed to his identity. He’d been twenty-six, fresh from Winchester, then Balliol College Oxford, and then a brief stint in the RAF. He’d enjoyed flying, on the whole, but unfortunately in these reasonably peaceful times it was more drills than action, and a life of rigid authority didn’t suit Harry. So back home he’d gone, sloping around London until an old family friend, Chester Arbuthnott, had met him for lunch at the Hurlingham Club and asked him about his current activities and quietly suggested he might like to do something more interesting with his time. 

Back then he’d been restless, arrogant, keen to establish himself as the most confident man in the room by any means necessary: flirting or fighting or fucking, it was all the same to him. He’d excelled in training, though, rising to meet each new challenge with enthusiasm, be it a crash course in Spanish or emergency field medicine or the finer points of Japanese etiquette. That had been the fun part. Learning so very much in such a short time was terribly exciting, and when Harry looked back through training it was those moments that stood out most sharply in his mind, quiet afternoons sitting at a desk and watching Ector (mid-forties, short brown hair, liked Mahler and Chopin and couldn’t stand Mozart) assemble and disassemble a rifle over and over until they were intimately familiar with each and every tiny piece. 

There had been other moments too. That morning where Harry had woken up to the sound of birdsong, alone in a field with a canteen of water and a note that read “be back by sunset”. It had been a long, hard slog through forests and fields and mud, desperately looking for landmarks or road-signs or passing farmers, trying to map the lay of the land by rivers and farms and which way the cows were facing.

Cows always aligned themselves facing in a north-south direction. It was something to do with magnetic fields, apparently. That useless piece of knowledge that one of Harry’s brothers had imparted to him when he was twelve was probably the only thing that had got Harry back to HQ in time, filthy and exhausted and exuberant with his own success. There’d been six of them left, then, by sunset. They’d watched it together from the steps of the manor, none of them daring to express sympathy for poor Jonty when he staggered up to the steps as the sun dipped below the horizon. Limits must be tested. 

Then a tiny terrier had been placed in his hands, and Harry had discovered what it was to be responsible for a life other than his own. Mr Pickle was smaller than any of the other dogs, dwarfed by Edward’s sleek Doberman and Martin’s Rottweiler, but he had the heart of a lion in his tiny frame and he was as obstinate as a mule. He’d been a devil to train, and Harry had expended more hours on trying to teach him good behaviour than he had on any other task, he was sure, but he’d never had a companion so loyal and so brave. 

That day in the cages Harry had hesitated, looking at a Sheltie puppy with intelligent eyes and a curious expression who’d come to sniff at him through the bars. Then he’d seen Simon looking at the little Cairn terrier, clearly the runt of its litter, and scoffing derisively. 

“Hideous little rat. It looks like something preserved in a jar.” 

Suddenly he’d been half-dizzy with the sudden urge to pick up the terrier and protect it with everything he had. He scooped up the tiny little life, felt a rough tongue lick his hand, and named him Mr Pickle as an additional act of total defiance.

That had been the first time Harry had realised how much he felt for an underdog.

Somewhere in training between the adrenaline and the wary rapport that grew between the remaining group as their numbers decreased, somewhere in the course of their puppies growing into adult-sized dogs and their assault course times becoming even halfway respectable, Harry had grown up. He was still a show-off, yes, still impulsive and liable to get halfway through an acerbic comment before he even realised he’d opened his mouth, but there was something growing underneath all of that. There was a deep reserve of patience that Harry had never been aware of before. _This too shall pass_ became a mantra they all shared. Harry discovered how to make himself calm, placid, unruffled, letting difficulties slide off him like water off a duck’s back. To hide himself deep inside that calm reserve and wait for the difficulties to pass was a strange sort of meditation, but it helped him through those times where his heart was pounding and his vision darkening and the noise felt like it was splintering his skull. 

Harry Hart passed every test with flying colours. When Merlin – an old man in a mustard jacket with wild, white hair and no patience for any nonsense – placed a gun in his hand and told him to shoot Mr Pickle, Harry did so without hesitation. Later that night in the dormitory his fellow finalist Edward confessed that he’d aimed for his Doberman’s leg, and Harry had stared at him aghast for a moment, unable to conceive of how prolonging such suffering could be in any way said to be a kindness. Sometimes it was simply better to let things end. 

On their final test, a “nursery mission” as Chester had called it, when Edward was shot in the leg and stumbled, gasping, leg buckling under him, Harry had to remind himself of that. Let things end. This too shall pass. Limits must be tested. 

None of those mantras had been particularly helpful, but the thought of going back to a life of normality after all this trounced the idea of his loyalty to Edward who, after all, was competition. Harry had always been a profoundly selfish individual. Not callous, but selfish. He gritted his teeth and held more tightly to the floppy disk they’d been sent for and ran onwards. Later, Edward was loaded into a nearby vehicle by an extraction team, and Harry was crowned Galahad, the fourth of his name. 

All of that had been last night. 

It was still dark when Harry was jolted awake by the sound of a doorbell. It was rather a tasteful bell, a mild chime just loud enough to break the silence of this little house on Stanhope Mews without shattering through the air like the screech of the bells at Winchester. All the same, training made one a light sleeper, and even if he hadn’t been awoken by the bell, the sound of Mr Pickle barking as he scrambled off the end of the bed and barrelled downstairs would have done the trick. Harry grimaced, reaching automatically for the siren suit at the side of his bed, only to find a carved walnut table instead. 

Going from the bare-bones dormitory to a little house that he was told was his, all soft carpets and tasteful décor, was very peculiar. Harry got out of bed and stood for a moment, listening to Mr Pickle bark at the unknown caller, finally reaching for a deep red robe on the back of the door and tying it around himself. Whomever it was who wanted him, surely they could have waited until a little later than seven in the bloody morning. Hadn’t he earned a lie-in? 

He opened the door to a young man with dark hair and a stern expression, suited in what was quite clearly a Kingsman-made suit. Harry could recognise the slightly different weave of the fabric even at this distance, designed to stop a bullet in its tracks. He resisted, barely, the urge to stand at attention, trying to remind himself that he was a Knight now. He didn’t owe anybody his allegiance but Arthur. 

“Good morning,” he said mildly, watching Mr Pickle sniff his polished shoes before trotting off to the kitchen, apparently satisfied. 

“Morning, Galahad. I’m here to talk you through some of the finer points of this house – most notably the security system.” He was Scottish, brusque and to the point, and Harry was still far too close to sleep to deal with efficiency like this. 

“Oh, I see.” He didn’t ask whether or not it could have waited until later, but the unspoken question hung in the air regardless. The man didn’t look impressed. Harry scrambled for some sort of familiar ground, casting about for a time-honoured piece of protocol. “Would you like a cup of tea?” 

No change on that stern face. He had heavy brows and a sharp nose and Harry wanted to see him in profile to draw him or sculpt him and pretend he was some manner of Roman senator. He exuded authority, though he couldn’t have been much older than Harry, if at all. “I’m sorry, I didn’t ask your name-?”

“Lamorak.” 

Another Knight. Well, either that or a set of very unusual parents, but the former seemed more probable. Harry hadn’t seen him around the manor before, he was sure he’d have remembered if he had. Perhaps he’d been on a mission at the time. Or several missions, given the fifteen months he’d spent mainly at HQ. He shook Lamorak’s hand anyway and stepped aside to let him in. 

“Do you mind terribly if I go upstairs and get dressed first? I’m afraid I wasn’t expecting you, else I’d have been better turned out.” 

“Ah.” Lamorak relaxed, slightly, as if that explained something. “Bedivere should have told you I was coming round. Technically speaking this is _his_ job, but he’s been called away suddenly.” 

Chester was often being called away suddenly. Harry didn’t have the faintest idea what he spent his time doing, but Chester had always been the secretive type, quiet and taciturn with rare moments of humour betraying a personality under all that protocol. Harry still didn’t know how he’d come into contact with his family, or even why he’d plucked Harry from the tumultuous life he’d selected for himself, but he wasn’t about to probe too closely. Nepotism or a long-running plan or whatever else it was, it had landed him a job and a house and a dog, and he wasn’t in the habit of looking gift horses in the mouth. 

“Well, I’m sure you’re far more personable than he is. I’ll pop up and dress, I’ll be right down. Do make yourself at home, of course, there’s milk in the fridge, I think, and coffee, and such- “ 

Harry cut himself off before he could ramble further, turning abruptly to walk upstairs and dress. The wardrobe of Kingsman suits was fresh and new and a delight to behold. He’d been measured for them shortly after shooting Mr Pickle, a betrayal still fresh in his mind that he was sure the little terrier hadn’t forgotten. He’d been forgiven, more or less, but he’d found one or two “presents” in his shoes (something that hadn’t happened since puppyhood) that suggested Mr Pickle hadn’t appreciated having a gun pointed at his bristly little face. 

He was a perceptive dog, that one. 

Harry dressed carefully, a clean shirt and a charcoal grey suit, hesitating over a choice of tie. Somehow it felt important not to let the side down on this first impression. He’d met most of the other Knights over the course of training, of course: Ector had been in charge of weaponry, Tristan had taught them to spar in a variety of terrifying and quite possibly illegal martial arts, Caradoc had been instrumental in honeypot techniques and deportment, and so on and so forth. They’d seen him as a fresh and clueless recruit, and they’d been sweet enough about congratulating him when he’d emerged from Arthur’s office. They knew he was green; he didn’t need to pretend. 

Lamorak, on the other hand, didn’t know a damn thing about him, and Harry refused to make a bad first impression if he could help it. He settled on a dark blue tie and headed back downstairs, adjusting his cufflinks restlessly and finding Lamorak in the living room examining a box of some of Harry’s possessions. He’d been assured that all the necessary arrangements for transporting his things would be made soon, but he’d managed to wrangle a box of essentials (photographs, books, and so on). 

“Tea?” 

“Please.” 

At least making tea was something that Harry couldn’t bugger up, and there was a rather nice teapot in the cupboard. He busied himself while the kettle boiled, filling a sugar bowl and a little milk jug and setting a proper tray up. He even went on a brief and frantic search for biscuits before he caught himself, reminding himself that this was a business meeting, not afternoon tea with his mother and her friends. Though his mother’s friends were twice as intimidating as any of the Knights at HQ, and Harry would rather face men with guns – or indeed Medusa herself – than his mother when she’s in a bad mood.

They took tea in the living room, and Lamorak looked a little incongruous with a china teacup in his hand. It wasn’t that he was especially intimidating, he was just very focused. Harry could imagine him pointing a gun at somebody without any trouble whatsoever. 

“Right. So, you’re here to-“

“To induct you. More or less.” 

“Oh. I rather thought I’d been inducted already. Arthur gave me a pat on the head and told me I’d been a good boy, and here I am. I assumed I’d wait for my next mission.”

Lamorak gave him a look that suggested he was questioning his intelligence and Harry looked back, finding that placid reserve of calm inside himself and holding steady. It was hardly his fault he hadn’t been told a bloody thing by anybody. Training had been a long race to run with a very clear end-goal and very little insight into the day-to-day life of a Knight. 

“Shockingly, Galahad, we don’t make a habit of throwing fresh recruits straight into the field,” Lamorak said dryly after a moment. “We’d lose half of you on your first mission, and that would be quite the waste of resources.”

Harry’s lips thinned at that. The image of Edward on the floor watching him, one hand clutching his injured leg, was still all-too fresh in his mind. Had he been a waste of resources? He’d been a good recruit too, certainly competition enough for Harry. Where Harry excelled at interpersonal tasks, the extraction of information by various means, deep cover and alibis, Edward had been an exceptional marksman, adept at extraction. He’d have been a wonderful soldier. Over the course of just over a year they’d spent rather a lot of time together, and underneath all that wariness that they’d all shrouded themselves with there was a sunny disposition and a gently ironic sense of humour that had rather charmed Harry. He wasn’t quite so keen to see himself – or Edward – as just another number. Not yet. 

“I suppose one has to be careful with the allocation of resources. It would be terrible to waste a house this nice on a corpse,” he replied mildly, and Lamorak’s lips twitched, Harry caught that. Whether it was for a smile or a sneer or a scowl he wasn’t sure, but there was a person behind that official exterior and Harry was determined to bring him out. He didn’t want to converse with a suit. “Well, what _is,_ in store for me, then?” 

“Further training, believe it or not. You’ll go on a few more nursery missions, first in an auxiliary role with one or two other Knights, and then on your own. We’ll find where you’re best suited, and you’ll grow from there. Don’t imagine that your development is over – you’ve a long way to go.” 

“Clearly,” Harry muttered into his tea. “Well, alright.” In its way, it was a relief. Being thrown into the deep end was a disorienting experience, and it was a very condescending comfort to know that despite his house and his suits he was still just a baby to them. Harry was determined to prove them wrong, of course, but in his own time. There was no shame in pausing to get his bearings first. 

After that, things became a little more companionable. Lamorak answered his questions quickly and concisely, none of the waffling that Chester was prone to about tradition or honour or legacy. Hearing about the security in his perfectly normal-looking house was a revelation, though. The cameras were predictable enough, and Harry wasn’t much deterred by them, even the ones in the bedroom or the bathroom. Even if he were ashamed of his body, which he wasn’t before training and certainly wasn’t now, he had spent over a year in that dormitory with its hideous open bathrooms. Having watched and been watched in his daily ablutions he was even more shameless than he ever used to be. Strangers watching him have a shit or a shave or a wank were nothing new to him. 

The remotely-activated gas vents in the living room were a little more of a shock, granted, not to mention a heinous fire risk. Harry made a mental note to put a post-it note on the kitchen door. No drunken bacon sandwiches to be made before the security features have been disabled, he’s no wish to go up in flames for the sake of some beans on toast. 

“Do you get many people breaking in?” he asked finally, exasperated, cutting off Lamorak’s explanation of just how the near-invisible tripwire on the bedroom landing can be disabled. 

“About average for an affluent area like this,” Lamorak replied, looking bemused. “We wouldn’t want a neighbourhood thief stumbling onto your collection of weaponry, would we?” 

“They might consider it quite their lucky day if they did. They’re very collectable.” 

"Very funny, Galahad." Harry got the sense that Lamorak was growing a little tired of him. “Look, it’s not a difficult routine to settle into once you’ve spent a little time on it. You’re starting a new life anyway, might as well get all the changes done at once.” 

“Is that how it was for you?” 

“Mm,” Lamorak hummed, non-committal, and Harry scowled. 

“Well, was it?” 

“More or less. I’ve added some of my own additions.” 

“Paranoid?” 

“Not especially. Everybody needs a hobby.” 

“And yours is home renovations, is it?” 

Lamorak gave him a peculiar look over his shoulder, stepping away from the number pad in the front hallway and closing it shut. Between that and the retina scanner and the biometric technology Harry was getting very tired of this. He was hoping for a home, not a fortress. 

“You seem very het-up about this,” Lamorak said eventually, as if he’d debated whether or not to bother mentioning anything. Harry pursed his lips and flipped through a few answers in his head before shrugging. 

“It’s been a long week.” 

“I suppose it has. I remember when I was Knighted, it-“

“Yes, when was that?” Harry asked, suddenly curious all over again. “You don’t look that much older than me, and I haven’t seen you around at all.” 

“I was seconded to R&D. Specialist training. Apparently Merlin was getting tired of coaching Knights through the same basic instructions over and over without them ever bothering to remember the steps.”

That explained a lot, really. Harry didn’t venture into the labs very often. Not because he wasn’t superficially interested in it, but mainly because his interest in technology was terribly functional. He wanted to know what a button did, he wasn’t very concerned about the hows or whys or wherefores. Besides, every time he’d ended up in the labs Merlin had chased him out with his own particular brand of incoherent exasperation, and there was precious little free time on the training programme, so Harry hadn’t bothered to spend much of it at the labs. 

“I’ve been a Knight for four years, now.” Lamorak spoke after the silence had stretched on for long enough, looking at Harry with an odd expression on his face, halfway between irritation and sympathy. “It’s an upheaval, but it gets easier. And if you made it this far, you’ll be alright.” 

Harry was sure that Lamorak had meant that to be reassuring, but he was more at sea than he had been before. He’d been so determined to make a good impression and yet here he was being cossetted and comforted like a child. He was not comfortable receiving that comfort and it couldn’t be more obvious that Lamorak wasn’t used to giving it. The whole thing made Harry tense, a knot in his gut and something like impostor syndrome creeping in. Harry Hart – Galahad – secret agent. It didn’t feel right. 

It was everything he wanted. He didn’t know what it was going to be. This total lack of certainty now he was out of the narrow paths of training was disorientating in a way he’d never expected or anticipated and _God, he wanted a task, he wanted something to do, to excel at, to impress with_ so he didn’t feel so bloody _useless_.

“I’m sure,” he replied shortly and Lamorak’s face slid smoothly back to a neutral expression. They moved through the house, Lamorak showing him the panel in the wall that slid back to reveal a wall of weapons, guns and knives for the most part, a taser in there too, something that could be used as a rather functional garrotte from the looks of it. It was like a tour through a crude haunted house, false rooms and ghosts on the stairwell. Harry wondered how many Knights had lived in this house before him. There were tiny holes up the stairs where somebody had clearly hung some frames, indents in the bedroom carpet where something heavy – a bookcase, perhaps? – had once stood. As if reading his mind Lamorak turned back to him, hands slipping into his pockets. 

“You’re free to decorate however you wish, of course, though obviously if you’d ambitions towards a conservatory or something of the like that’s probably out. It would disrupt all the wiring. If you’re after artwork there’s a collection in HQ somewhere, mainly bequeathed by past Knights, you can pick and choose from there as long as you sign it out so the curator knows where it is.” 

Something about that made Harry uneasy, signing out fripperies and possessions from somebody else’s life, constructing the façade of a normal life around himself. If this was going to be his life, he didn’t bloody want it to be normal. 

“I used to collect butterflies. I suppose they might add a splash of colour.” 

Clearly even Lamorak’s extensive training wasn’t enough to stop his sudden grimace, the first flash of any real feeling he’d shown thus far, and Harry felt a vindictive little flare of satisfaction at that. He was pushing, now, prodding, doing his best to unseat Lamorak to make up for how unseated he is. It was deeply unfair and deeply impolite and he didn’t care. 

“If you’re inclined to put corpses on your walls I’m sure you’re free to do so.” 

Harry scoffed at that, rolling his eyes. “It’s no more morbid than...oh, I don’t know, hunting trophies in a lodge somewhere. You’re Scottish, you must have seen some of those.” 

“Must I?” 

There wasn’t any sensible answer to that and Harry scowled. They were back in the living room now and Harry threw himself down onto the sofa, petulant and childish and unrepentant. “Look, was that all?” 

“I suppose so.” Lamorak was back to being unruffled again. How the hell had he got under Harry’s skin like that? Perhaps it wasn’t anything to do with him at all, perhaps it was entirely situational. Harry had the very strong sense that he ought to apologise, but there was no way of doing that without admitting that he was behaving like a child, and he just- he refused. He refused. “I’ll leave you to settle in, Galahad. You’ve got today off. You’ll report to HQ tomorrow at nine.” 

“Right.” 

Lamorak saw himself out. Harry stared at the teapot for answers and, finding none, went to stare at Mr Pickle instead. The terrier wasn’t any more helpful but he was, at least, a distraction, and Harry busied himself with scratching the little dog’s ears until his back leg thumped against the floor. 

* * * * *

The next time he saw Lamorak was a few weeks later at HQ. Harry had been for a swim, hair still wet, towel slung over his shoulder as he trudged through to the locker room to retrieve his clothes. That was the downside of the suits he was required to wear – nothing was so uncomfortable as a suit on chlorine-coated skin. Lamorak was in the locker-room too, dark hair damp with sweat, dressed in a pair of dark sweatpants and nothing else. Harry felt a jolt of – surprise? Apprehension? God only knew what. The only thing to do was persevere so he crossed to his locker anyway, coughing. 

“Morning.” 

“Mm?” Lamorak turned, looking Harry up and down briefly. “Galahad,” he greeted eventually, perfectly courteous, expression as smooth and blank as it had been last time they’d met. Harry wanted to push it off his face again, somehow. Whether with a remark about butterflies or a punch to the jaw or a kiss he wasn’t sure, but something about that neutral, polite expression made his skin crawl. 

“Lamorak,” he replied, rubbing the towel over his hair again before reaching for deodorant. “Look, I- last we spoke, I- “

“Think nothing of it,” Lamorak said briskly, reaching for a t-shirt and tugging it on over his head. “Perfectly normal at your stage, so I’m told.” 

That made Harry cringe internally, wondering who else Lamorak had told about this fresh new recruit who could barely stumble his way through a conversation with another Knight, who seemed so totally at odds with what was expected of him. He tried not to let his discomfort show and Lamorak seemed to take pity on him again, sighing. 

“I was the same. Training is difficult, but it’s focused. Jumping from that into something like this,” he gestured around them vaguely, “is a transition. I told you – an upheaval. Are you feeling more settled now?” 

“More or less. I know what’s expected of me, and that’s helpful.” 

“Well, by all accounts you’re doing well.” 

There was another pause but it was far more comfortable than any of the ones back at home had been. Harry busied himself with dressing, feeling a lick of that strange self-consciousness creep into his actions. He cared what Lamorak thought of him, though for the life of him he couldn’t think _why_. He’d never spent much time caring about anybody else. 

“I look forward to working with you,” he said after a moment, and didn’t know why he’d said it, but the look of brief surprise on Lamorak’s face was worth it. 

“Yes. So do I. It won’t be long, I shouldn’t think – during your first year they’ll make an effort to pair you up with as much other Knights as possible to see who you can and can’t cooperate with efficiently. Tristan and Gawaine, for example, aren’t allowed to pair on missions.” 

“Oh, yes?” That was a bit of gossip that Harry hadn’t heard yet and he leaned in despite himself. He was a self-confessed tart for gossip, always had been, and HQ’s polished corridors were replete with whispers about all kinds of things. Lamorak looked amused at his enthusiasm but clearly had decided to indulge him, and Harry was fine to play along with that for as long as he could. 

“It’s actually not nearly so interesting as it sounds. They’re a pair of competitive little shits and the results of their competitions are often far more expensive than they’re worth. Arthur thinks it’s best that they’re kept apart before they bankrupt us.” 

Something about hearing profanity in Lamorak’s measured tones made Harry’s stomach clench. He smiled, wondering when he’d last smiled. Training, perhaps? Just after? He wasn’t really sure. 

“Well, I don’t suppose one gets here without being competitive.”

“One gets here by being the best at what they do.” 

Harry found himself leaning against the locker, caught up in Lamorak’s intense eyes. Lamorak seemed wholly unconcerned by his presence, but he couldn’t resist his own desire to push and prod and see what he can elicit from the other man. 

“And what do you do?” he asked innocently. Lamorak’s brow furrowed, all of that focus suddenly on him, and then his lips twitched into what was definitely a smile, and a mischievous one at that. Perhaps there was hope for this acquaintanceship after all. 

“Right now, I’m off to do my job. Later, I'm sure I'll be doing something else. I try to keep my activities varied. See you soon, Galahad.” 

Harry watched him go and felt the same twinge of interest he had when he was sixteen and Anthony Henderson in Upper Sixth had let him share a cigarette and Harry had never felt so privileged or so keen to impress. Perhaps this was a matter of finding the right focus after all. If he could give himself a goal, he could find his balance again. And Lamorak was a goal enough for him. Not in the crudest of senses, of course, but a drink would do for now. Harry set out of the gym with new intent and watched the months spread out before him, missions and meetings and, if he did well, plenty of time to make some gossip of his own.

**Author's Note:**

> Just wanted to write young Harry and Merlin, really, though you don't get much Merlin here at all. May continue this, may not, have not yet decided. This is pretty clumsy but that transition from training to fully-fledged Knight has got to be a jarring one and I wanted to explore that a little.
> 
> Find me on tumblr at ajcrawly!


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